iPad mini has advanced software to detect unintended touches around the screens bezel

Apple officially announced the iPad mini at its special media event yesterday and one of the things that stands out on the iPad mini is the thinness of the bezel surrounding the screen. if you compare the new iPad with the iPad mini, you can see in portrait mode that the bezel on the left and right hand side is much slimmer on the iPad mini. One of the problems with a thin bezel is that it makes holding the device much harder without actually touching the screen and inadvertently interacting with the software on the touch screen. Thankfully Apple has taken care of the problem with some advanced software.

iPad mini is small. But when you use it, it doesn’t feel small. That’s because it’s designed to give you the maximum amount of screen in the minimum amount of space. To achieve that, we had to rethink the relationship between the screen and the overall shape of the product. iPad has symmetrical bezels around all of its edges. But for iPad mini, we reduced the width of the bezels on two sides of the display. So although the screen is smaller, it’s even more prominent. Rethinking the screen meant we also had to rethink the software behind it. iPad mini intelligently recognizes whether your thumb is simply resting on the display or whether you’re intentionally interacting with it. It’s the kind of detail you’ll notice — by not noticing it. And it’s a great example of how Apple hardware and software work together to give you the best experience possible.

So according to Apple, you don't need to worry about inadvertently touching the screen when you're holding the iPad mini. We will be interested to see how good the software is in real world situations but Apple appears confident enough to make us aware that it exists so we wouldn't be surprised if it works exactly as intended.

Bring out the tests! Naturally, I expect people to complain very loudly about the 1% of the time it doesn't work and not say much about the 99% of the time it does. Negative press about Apple gets a lot more attention than positive press these days.

On the video about the mini I was wondering about that because the kid looking at the dinosaur app had his thumb in the screen but the swipe worked. That will be pretty awesome for the software to recognize that